So I’ve been watching all the Alien movies in anticipation of Alien: Romulus. Some I haven’t seen yet, some I’ve seen a few times. But watching them all together, I’m noticing a pattern or motif that keeps coming up. The “company” (Weyland-Yutani) really wants this creature. They knew about it before anyone else in the universe did. They know where it is. They keep sending people out to get one and bring it back discretely (by which I mean setting them up to become infected). Why do they want it so bad? Well, it’s not clear, but one thing they keep saying is that it’s perfect. So my question is,…
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Analyzing the Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains: Iron Monger (Iron Man)
Iron Monger Real Identity: Obadiah Stane Iron Man (2008) Characteristics and Powers: Stane is a large bald man, about fifty years old, with a long CV of business, business, business. He worked on the arc reactor prototype and directed the company into weapon-manufacturing, which led it to becoming the powerhouse it is today. Stane is a duplicitous, two-faced old sod. He can glad hand the press one day, then stab you in the back the next–not unusual for businessmen. Profit is his Achilles heel. So much that he gets reckless trying to duplicate Tony’s success with the Iron Man suit. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the suit. Stolen from…
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The Year of Short Stories: Final Edition
The great experiment is done. I spent all of 2024 not working on novels, but short stories. Some revising, but mostly composing. My goal was to produce one per week–52 new short stories to send to publications and editors to augment my CV. Did I do it? Yes I did. I made 52 new short stories… if you put your thumb on the scale, or smudge the bottom line, sure, it’s 52, it’s a 52-like number. Fifty-two-ish. My plan is to take the top half, the ones I think have the best chance of being sold, and submit them for critiques. Then revisions and submissions. I’m optimistic that this will…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2024
The Rack: Stories Inspired By Vintage Horror Paperbacks edited by Tom Deady This is a collection of short stories all based around “monsters”, kind of. It says it exemplifies those books in the paperback rack in the grocery store or bookstore that had scary violent covers meant to inflame the senses (as featured in Paperbacks from Hell) but those are mostly monsters. Some are serious, some are ridiculous. You got giant spiders, werewolves, haunted houses, demon bears, lots of dolls, clowns. You know, the standard, very eighties. And it had some good authors like Max Booth III, Richard Chizmar, and an old Stephen King story that was dramatized in Creepshow…
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Rape Revenge Movies: Who are they for?
I don’t remember when or why, but I found a list of a few “women’s revenge” movies that I added to my list and only now I’m getting around to seeing. So far I’ve seen “Bandit Queen“, “M.F.A.“, and I watched “Promising Young Woman” a little while ago. Bandit Queen seemed more like a fetishy “watch a woman get raped” film than a satisfying vengeance film. M.F.A. was the opposite–a woman falls into a pattern of violent revenge she can’t get out of. And Promising Young Woman is just… it’s just so good, it should’ve won the Oscar. Especially that scene in the dean’s office. So much tension, anger, only…
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The Commodore 64 Game Therapy
A long long time ago, when I was but a wee bairn, my grandfather owned a Commodore 64 computer. That’s pretty unusual for a guy born in 1921, served in WWII and the Korean War, to be embracing the technological age so early. He had a PC before our family had a PC. And my dad was a mainframe guy–he got a job in tech when they were still using punch cards and big old magnetic tape storage. Anyway, I would rather play on the computer than listen to my parents and grandparents talk. Because that’s all they did. And they didn’t have any fun stuff like my maternal grandparents…
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Interlude: Prior to the MCU, Where Are We At?
So I wanted to take the opportunity, before the MCU truly begins, to see where we’re at in terms of superhero movies. We had a strong start with the first X-Men and the first Spider-Man, triumphs with their sequels, but duds with their final films. Standalones like The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, and The Punisher haven’t done well either. The stage they set is shaky. Is the superhero movie market collapsing? Will anyone come to their aid? One thing both these series have in common is that the heroes spend most of their time fighting among themselves (sometimes within themselves, in the case of Spider-Man). The X-Men is mutant vs. mutant.…
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I’m in Beast Hunt Vol. 1
I have a short story in the new anthology Beast Hunt. It goes live on December 13, 2024. BEAST HUNT invites you to step into the claws, wings, and scales of the creatures humanity has feared for centuries. From mighty dragons to forgotten forest spirits, from mechanical monstrosities to cursed beings of the deep—these are the stories of the unseen, the unheard, and the misunderstood. When the world brands you a monster, how far will you go to prove them wrong? Or… how far will you go to prove them right? This gripping anthology of dark fantasy and emotional depth unveils the raw struggles of beasts who feel, who rage, who…
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The Villain of Today
One thing I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been analyzing villains, Disney and Marvel. Something I’ve noticed as I’ve watched them evolve. Starting at about 1990, America no longer has an “external other” to hate or villainize in terms of a mass group. Prior to the sixties, Westerns had Indians. War movies had Nazis. Between that and the eighties, we had serial killers and clinical psychopaths. Then we got Soviets and communists. But after 1990, there’s nothing like that anymore. Political correctness gathers more momentum. After the Vietnam War, we’re become savvy about propaganda. We know that it’s meant to dehumanize the enemy. We know the toll war takes on…
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The Books I Read: September – October 2024
Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon I’ve had this in my library for a long, long time, but never really had the inclination to read it until I was going to write a short story about an army woman in Afghanistan and needed research. I’ve already read “Love My Rifle More than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army” by Kayla Williams, but I barely remember anything from that. That was a personal memoir and very anti-military. This is more of an ensemble cast or narrative non-fiction. A report on the first women integrated into…
